I recently heard the story of Stravinsky's first performance of his "The Rite of Spring". His idea of spring was not rebirth, but violent change. A new growth ripping through the husk of the old. Labor pains of summer. The performance itself created a riot among the audience that drew blood. The police were called.
HELP! POLICE! STOP THEM!
I witnessed it's death. The strangulation of life. I stared across the street, mouth agape with incredulity. I could not move a muscle from behind the counter, only behold the life being taken. I gawked as the man reached down with a heedlessness as callous as his gardener hands and wrapped them around the stringy green neck of a beautifully purple flowered head. A mangler, a strangler, a goon. I held my breath for what seemed like an eternal moment as if my own neck was the own being throttled. And then, with a quick tug, the brute separated the neck and head from the rest of the body. The air in my lungs escaped with a small sound of helplessness as the ravager of summers lady disposed of her head with its purple locks in a bag as black as her potted earthen remain left on the sidewalk. Life cut short. Let her live on! Let her live longer!
OH THE HUMANITY! OH THE HUMANITY!
There is a serial killer out there ceremonially killing off all signs of summer. Walking to Melissa's I came upon another victim. The scene of a grisly murder that had taken place earlier lay before me as if from a slasher film. My heart shattered and hacked apart by the sight just as the pieces of it's once tall and strong body. What once was one unified whole stretching towards the sky now lay as a hundred splintered slabs covering the grass like a grisly carpet. A massacre. A slaughter. A dark pagan ritual sacrifice to Jack Frost.
Now outside my window, the wind tossed, jaundice castoffs of the crooked as a crone trees rattle along the streets like the sound of rickety cartoon skeletons. I hold out hope for an Indian summer. I'm not ready for theis season to be buried.
